THE HAUNTED KINGDOM 3 by CHARLES E.J. MOULTON (best books to read now txt) 📖

you. And the rewards I earned made it possible for the birds in the sky to sing my grandchildren their songs and … you know what? For me it was well worth all that pain and suffering. I learned to appreciate the gifts that love can give and how well worth it can be to fight for what you believe in. How well worth it can be to fight for love and win.”
What had Belinda answered to that?
She said: “Father, I am proud that I have wandered that road with you. I would do it again any time.”
”There are days left for us to wander with love mutually yet.”
”I look forward to those days with all my heart and all my soul.”
“There is a bright future out there, isn’t there?”
”The angels have told me so.”
So, the spiritual siblings, of the father and daughter kind, had learned to fight for love with the weapons of peace.
Alexander himself? Well, he had come home. Not just home to his own palace. He had come home to his own heart to say hello to his own spirit, sitting and enjoying the lute songs of Bantrard Silvermoon in the Grand Hall. He had come home to make peace with Patrick sitting and discussing food with his wife and son. He had come home to make peace with his daughter Morgana and tell her that he loved her. He had come home to laugh with Zedrick or talk politics with Zelat or make love to his wife.
He had come home to embrace his own heart in the form of his own spouse and his beloved Belinda inside a golden palace named Iuventus Sacrum.
The king dreamt of peace.
He had come home to stay, living freely within his own being upon a beach somewhere beyond. Somewhere beyond a never-ending dawn, waiting for three friends to arrive.
Alexander Winsletenna found himself at home again.
In his own heart.


CHAPTER ELEVEN

A NEW FUTURE

Throne Room, Iuventus Sacrum, Midday, 14th of April 1435

For the first time in her life, Belinda Winsletenna had no doubts at all about her own decision making.
Alfred was older now and already seeing a young girl. They met in the thermal baths late at night and did something in secret. Steven had his doubts that this was actually a good thing, but whenever the discussion arose Belinda reminded him of how she had let Steven make love to her on the balcony.
It was obvious that her life had been filled with pain, but also that her life had been full of love and full of passion. Making love and enjoying life had been and was a part of this passion.
Alexander didn’t give up the throne just yet. He was very much into his own decision making, he was still going on stately visits and he was still bickering whenever his daughters did not follow his advice. Patrick was still flirting with other women and drinking himself silly at night time without Erica.
Morgana and Richard, well, they were still together and their newest fashionable fun was going out to all the latest Clurafar feasts and dancing saltarellos and jigs. There were hundreds of small parties were lower blue blooded people came together to congratulate themselves upon being the most gorgeous individuals. It was a mutual admiration society, to be sure. What was really quite extraordinary furthermore was that they had become very distinguished people. No dirty small talk. No overly explicit talk or hope to make love in front of everyone. Actually, when they dined at The Rose, they spent most of their time speaking of literature and cooking and nature and, oh dear me, religion. Fashionable people in Clurafar said that the couple was the new elite.
Something had occurred with them that had made them wake up.
Belinda carried her secrets deep.
Her mother kept saying that a woman was a deep ocean of secrets and that was exactly what she felt. The way she felt could never be explained, not even to Steven.
Steven and she would make love until late at night, they would take walks, they would even seem to look into each other’s souls. But when it came to actually showing Steven the inside of her own heart, she could only do so much. There was a limit. A deep ocean of secrets is a woman, indeed.
What was funny was that Steven had experienced the same thing as she had.
There was no question of the pain that they were carrying around, all of them.
But now here was a secret: she enjoyed the fact that she had achieved what she had achieved.
She was very proud of her father. Very proud indeed.
He had done a good job.
Was that an understatement?
Yes, it was. He had achieved miracles.
He had saved them all.
Maybe saved human kind.
Well, he had saved the country at least.
Belinda sat back from her parchment and looked at the ink drying.
Did that describe her emotions sufficiently?
She thought so. She was older now and more clam, more intelligent and more secure in her life and personality. Deep down in heart she was still a girl. The same girl that had wandered the sunflower fields and tried to find out when Steven was going to ask her the question “Do you want to be mine?”
Writing a diary was a part of that experience. Writing down her thoughts and thinking about what things had occurred in her past.
She waved the parchment around and put it in her leather casket along with the rest of them.
It landed in the compartment below the king’ private papers.
Happy and content to have spent another morning here in the king’s spacious throne room, she stood up and went to her welcoming committee. They were here again to hear her speak of the welfare of religion. They were scattered across the classes and handpicked by Theo and Marcus and Philip and Simon. She had started with that a few years ago and had felt that tutoring the ones who needed help was a very important task, indeed. She would speak of the importance of honesty, fidelity and love. She would tell them about fine feelings and about history.
Every week the mostly ten or fifteen women would take walks along the river to the waterfall and they would picnic on the hill and good old Belinda would bring her lute. There was no question that during these days Belinda would feel like any frilly girl of say maybe thirteen, fourteen or maybe sixteen years of age. Several nice friendships had arose from these little days.
Belinda knew that she was beautiful, but she knew that she also had a responsibility toward her father and her family to uphold the legacy and so she would go to the parliament forum every week and speak to the stuffy old senator, bring her fanciest toga, give them extra cleavage, and yell at them for being so dry, ask them to pass a new law or simply visit the small people now and then. Then she would be invited to some senators palace afterwards and they would speak to her like a queen would be spoken to. The men would stare at her breasts and the women would giggle while she told them that there was a seat free at the table at every feast in the Grand Hall and that Bantrard would be happy to entertain them with songs while Rolf served the peacock with snails and lemon sauce to cranberry mead and she would be sure that the children would enjoy speaking to Uncle Zeddy about how horseback riding actually was done the way it actually should be done. Belinda walked out of the hall.
She knew she had some time before the little group of women expected her.
She headed for the Alexander Room, where she knew Alexander himself was holding a forum with Steven and Rolf and Theo about the upcoming homeopathic hearings, where any physician or homeopathic herbal curator could be of service to the open public or prove to the king that they were good enough to become official curators of the capital.
She hoped that Steven could have some time now to tell her when they could go skinny dipping by the Waterfall again. They had done that last week and that had been so much fun, due to the amount of lust that had bottled up after their last stately visit to the very chaste and strict land of Jamburee.
All in all, Belinda Winsletenna was a happy, content woman who one day was about to become queen of the largest empire ever to grace the alternate reality.
Already, she heard the laughing, rumbling, silly, wonderful bounce that was her father.
She opened the door and their they were.
All of them, drunk as toads as far as she could tell, greeted her happily with:
”Belinda! Come in here! Where and how have you been?”
She smiled, sat down in her husband’s lap and kissed her father hello.
They laughed and talked for a small while and after she had left them, she still heard them talking in there and jabbering on about which curator or barber or blacksmith or physical examiner to actually invite. Most of the time, though, it seemed, they poured wine into their mugs, had some figs and raisins and apples and talked about life.
Say, wasn’t it a joy to be home, after all?
Belinda walked down the large staircase down to the main hall and saw the women there.
Marcus and Philip had brought them there and she beamed as she saw them.
All unknown to her, shivering.
But she knew that she would be the best friends with them within the next hour. She would give them live tips and the women themselves would tell her how they had grown up and they would see that Belinda was just a woman. A woman with power, not anything else. She could’ve been born a gypsy and in some ways she felt like one.
She could’ve been born a singer and yes, she did sing.
She could’ve born and nun, although knowing her own lust, she probably would miss making love too much. But still, she prayed all day and told the angels and God all her deepest of secrets.
She could’ve been born a lute player and for all she knew she was a rather good one.
As she stretched forth her hand and dismissed the two servant messengers, she shook hands with all the women and asked them first what their names were and where they came from.
The next thing was going to the stables where Simon was waiting with full baskets of wine and food for them to carry up to the hill.
She knew that she would spending some time there, maybe until the evening.
She also knew that most probably they would go swimming in the lake together and end up in the Grand Hall for a pint of mead with the kind king, before the women, tipsy, drunk, a bit lusty and giggly were taken home individually by the four coachmen and their horses.
Belinda looked forward to another day just with women, just laughing.
As she wandered up the hill, her mind drifted.
She found herself watching the old oak where the names of the Winsletenna lovers were carved.
She could almost see herself carve her name on the stem of that tree.